


Playing Devil

by orphan_account



Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: But I started making myself genuinely upset so uh, DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU'RE SENSITIVE TO DISSECTION OR HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION OKAY, Dehumanization, Fire, Heartbreak, M/M, Major Character Injury, Murderous thought, Suicidal Thoughts, The ending was almost way worse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 02:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19984810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Glazed but bright eyes stared back, and Victor, for the first time in weeks, felt the world fall silent around him.In which Henry Clerval dies a fate defying death and Victor Frankenstein creates himself a new future.





	Playing Devil

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING WARNING GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF HUMAN DISSECTION AND ANATOMY  
> Do NOT read if you're squeamish I'm not exaggerating.

He could still remember Henry’s screams, they taunted him in his nightmares and waking moments, every moment potentially happy ruined by their piercing sound. The fire had started small, a lit candle knocked over onto a stray carpet, or a fireplace too rowdy in its evening meal, nobody knew for sure. All Victor knew was that Henry was gone, and along with him everything Victor cared about. He was gone but his screams stayed and they screamed, screamed, screamed.

It didn’t take him long to find the body, no one would dare question him scouring the echoes of the one lively manor, now a shell of itself, with the location of it just far away enough that if he was carrying anything suspicious, nobody would be able to discern what it was. 

Henry’s gorgeous, dark hair was completely gone, along with most of the adipose tissue coating his legs and torso, Victor noted, detached and numb from the pain that coerced his actions. The rest of Henry’s body was almost mummified, stiff from rigor mortis and black from soot and flame. Victor looked around, before unwrapping his dark cloak from his shoulders and covering the body with it. He picked the corpse up by its stiff legs and stiff torso, before beginning the trek back to the remnants of Frankenstein manor’s bowels. 

It was conveniently located, almost as if fate wanted Victor to do this. The fire had not eaten away at the farthest parts of the manor, the oldest parts made from heavy stone and heavier mourning. It was there that Victor had recreated his original lab, and there that he carried his prize. He quietly entered the dank room, smelling of embalming fluids and something darker, and much more dangerous, before laying him on the bed in the corner of the room.

As he methodically removed the scraps of clothing clinging to the decrepit form, he took notice of any wounds not caused by starving flame. Anything that would cause bleeding, or unforeseen illness in Henry’s inevitable future. Because it would be inevitable, Victor would make sure of that even if God himself tried to strike him down. Henry Clerval would be permitted the right to keep living, whether it be through natural or unnatural means that he does.

Stepping back for evaluation, Victor felt his detachment fade, allowing horror to slip in, with it came the memories, and the screams. He had begged for Victor to help him, for him to perform a miracle, or defy the demons that brought their hellfire. Victor might have been too late to prevent it all, but a miracle he would bring, reanimation of the dead, and this time it would be successful.

He didn’t need to create the finest man in existence, he had realized far too late. He already had him, with freckles and warm eyes and a warmer smile. Victor wondered if Henry would be upset with him for this, but the memories of his tears and the primal fear in his eyes told Victor that he wouldn’t. No one was ready to die, and no one ever really wanted too.

Victor mentally slapped himself, tossing his head and grimacing. Now was not the time for sentimentality! He would allow himself to become attached again after the experiments were completed, for now, Henry was just another cadaver to dissect and violate. Victor forced himself to pick up the scalpel set on his operating table, steadying his hand and steeling his soul.

The first cut was simple, a quick and fast stroke from the chest to the groin. Simple, and something fast to accomplish. And yet, Victor was forced to stop several times over, his damned hands shaking. He wanted this to be perfect, because Henry was perfect and Victor would never allow himself to tarnish that. The skin on his torso was leathery and smoked, all most like a jerky, Victor thought, somehow dazed and all too focused. The blood that flowed was thick, and sluggish. Blood from something dead and gone. 

Cracking the ribs open was easy, just a knee to the sternum and a strong grip, yet it felt as if Victor was caving his own thoracic cavity in instead of Henry’s. The blood caked his face, but he barely felt it, staring down at the delicate and grayed organs that were once vivacious with life and function. Each and everyone primed for each function, cells working like small soldiers to protect this flawless example, keeping him alive. 

Gently moving through membrane and excess viscera, he moved the lungs around with as much restraint as possible, already knowing just from the sight that he would have to replace them entirely. Eventually, he found his prize, Henry’s precious, precious heart. Victor half expected two of them to be sitting in his chest, knowing as well as he did that Henry had long stolen Victor’s own. It was bigger than expected, swollen and purpled to the iconic shade of death. Checking it over, he felt the area with a few thin fingers, wary of rupturing any coronary or pulmonary arteries. 

Victor’s check successful, he moved down to the thick, meaty membrane covering Henry’s intestines, before deciding to overlook them. The digestive tract was never unduly affected by excess smoke inhalation, and Victor would hate to puncture anything and risk sepsis, something very much beyond his ability to treat. 

Hours passed, and Victor slaved on, cataloging everything he would need to replace, and where he would need to find it. Scalp, nose, skin and hair would be the morgue; esophagus, lungs, Adipose tissue and eyes would be the graveyard. They were both lucky that Victor had sketched Henry so much through the years, or Victor doubted he would be able to successfully replicate the softness of his face, or the way his body curved. 

It took several days, and many trips to the aforementioned places under the disguise of the night for Victor to successfully gain the specimen he deemed as close to matching as possible. It took even longer for him to delicately stitched each piece together, beginning with the blackened lungs and working his way from there. The skin grafting took the longest, with Victor only sewing where he deemed it absolutely necessary, wishing to keep as much of the original corpse as possible. Eventually he made his way to the eyes, gently pinning the thin eyelids back with thin needles, he painstakingly sewed eyelashes onto both his waterline and outer lid. Victor refused to make the same mistake he did with the last one, a true wretch with demonic eyes to match.

The eyes he had found were relatively fresh, from someone not long deceased and freshly buried. A young man around their age, he faintly remembered from the twisted night he had finally found them. They had already become clouded with cataracts at that point, but their young age allowed for Victor to easily reanimate the decaying cells within, bringing forth an easy green. Carefully placing minute incisions over the thing flesh covering Henry’s preserved skeleton, Victor gently worked each optic nerve through that small hollow, working efficiently and with the grace of someone well practiced. He knew he was successful once he managed to manipulate each pupil into a smooth dilation, giving him an easy view of the bright green he had chosen for Henry. The smile of victory that had curled Victor’s lips dropped quickly however, when he noticed the fear the dilation overcast Henry’s face. It was too much too soon, and Victor forced his hands away, breathing deeply and feeling his nails biting into the padded skin of his palms. 

Victor allowed himself twenty minutes to sob quietly, pacing the room and tortured with Henry’s all-consuming wails, he doubted they would ever truly leave him, even when Henry was revived and Victor’s reason for existence was with him again. He allowed himself twenty minutes, and then he changed his blood caked gloves, and changed his rotting clothes, and washed his blood caked face and hair. He then forced himself back into the dark, windowless room that had become their womb, and, forgoing gloves this time, began to work on weaving Henry’s hair to his scalp. 

Henry was almost ready, bodily he was perfect, an almost exact replica of the man Victor adored. The perfection might have been for a cost, of sleep and food and the ever increasing amount of gray hair atop Victor’s young head, but he cared not for these things. The most important thing was that this experiment succeed again, and that Henry be birthed into this world new and yet old. 

The only thing needed was a blood thinner, and the serum needed to revive the decay and apoptosis that had gripped Henry so many days ago. The blood thinner was simple, just a matter of saline and a liquefied anticoagulant, it was fast and painless, and Victor took it upon himself to inject it into the artery nearest Henry’s heart, feeling it romantic at that moment. The serum however, needed a touch of expertise. A delicate balance of formaldehyde used to pause decay, saline to induce osmosis, a dopamine antagonist to induce brain function and cellular cooperation; fatty acids for the oligosaccharides needed for cell communication, blood lacking in both the A and B category antigen in both the plasma and blood, yet fresh and full of the red and white blood cells Henry’s system would undoubtedly need to replicate. 

This thin serum, a diluted pink, would be injected directly into Henry’s heart. It was this that was the most dangerous part of the game, should he make one misstep, the entire attempt would be useless and he would have to restart. It was with these forbidding thoughts clouding Victor’s mind, that he withdrew the last piece of equipment he would require for Henry’s reanimation. Counting each rib underneath his breath, Victor prepared the deadly long syringe he had blended the serum in. When he reached rib six, directly underneath the Xiphoid process, he lifted this deadly mixture, and slowly pierced the fresh skin he had crafted. 

With a certain amount of knowledge, one could pierce directly through the sixth and seventh rib, and slide through the base of the heart into the left ventricle, and thus allowing the heart to pump it from left to right, then to the pulmonary arteries and into the rest of the body. Victor plunged the base of the syringe, and ever so slowly allowed it to empty, breathing a sigh of relief when he felt the give specific to the mitral and aortic valve.

Steadily removing the instrument, he tossed it aside before falling over Henry’s chest, and forcing his chest down with a steady pumping motion. Without the ability to move itself, it was necessary for Victor to spread the serum through the body himself, and the burn of his shoulders and arms was necessary evil to do so. 

Several minutes passed with each pump of Victor’s hands, the shadows looming and suffocating as he waited for any sign of life. A breath, the heart underneath Victor to begin a rhythm, the movement of eyelids, anything. Anything! Victor waited and waited and Henry screamed and screamed until, he felt it. It was weak, and barely traceable, but it was there, a gentle beat against Henry’s rib cage. 

The joy that burst in Victor’s body at that brought a manic laughter to his lips, and a rush of adrenaline through his body. He could feel his legs tremble beneath himself as he stood there, propped over the reanimated corpse of his dearest friend. He did not notice the viscera, or the musty scent of rot and decay that filled the room, nor did he notice the strange crime that coated his body and hands, or the greasy strands of hair that fell in his face with his shaking. No, the only thing worth noticing wasn’t of Victor himself, but of his creation, his friend, the love of his damned life. 

He could only wait, staring unblinking at the prone form beneath him, at the pallid face and purpled eyelids that hid Henry’s gaze from his. Victor dared not even break his line of sight when he heard the rattle of deflated lungs attempting to rise, trying to clear mucus and saliva from airways and perform its most primal and necessary task. He watched as oxygenated blood and water and plasma slowly filled the hollow cheeks of Henry Clerval, and he watched as the carefully sewn eyebrows twitched, and how his perfectly curved nose moved.

It was within a trance that he stared down, not even daring to breathe, as the thin lids slowly began to open, revealing glazed green eyes, and unsteady pupils. Victor watched as Henry hiccuped lightly, blinking and clearing stringy cataracts from his sight. The smile upon his mouth made his face ache, and he could taste the blood dripping into his mouth from where the dried skin had spit open, but Henry was alive.

Except, something strange was taking place. Henry stared deep into his eyes, and Victor into his creations’, and yet the spark wasn’t there. There was no warmth in Henry’s eyes, no recollection or love for Victor there. They were blank, empty like a newborn, and with a growing dread Victor realized exactly what he had done. Henry didn’t remember him. He had just needlessly created another monster for his first to corrupt, something unnatural and demonic. Henry Clerval was truly dead, and Victor was left hopeless all at once.

He took a step back, broken hearted, as the beast before him twitched, crooning lightly in a voice that did not belong to him. Victor stared in disgust as the creature opened and closed his stolen mouth slowly, eyes never moving from Victor’s face. The wretch’s breathing was slow and laborious, and Victor began to hear screaming all over again, falling into his own personal hell. 

He refused to accept this! Refused to acknowledge the beast before him was once his friend, his love, refused to believe that Henry could forget everything they had been through. The guilt of desecrating his closest friend’s body made his breath catch, and he could only watch the hell-child they had created together as salt made his eyes sting. The scars and stitching, once twined with care and affection, now seemed hideous and marring. The infantile look in the creature’s eyes a mockery of Henry’s bright personality.

Hate made his teeth clench, and the glare in his eyes made the demon draw back instinctively in fear, Victor had never felt a hate so strong before, so devouring and rabid. It was like the fire that started this failure, hellfire that ruined his home and his mind and his friend, and left him with no foundation to start with and haunting screams. 

And in a flash of inspiration, Victor Frankenstein, once a heartbroken man and now truly a monster corrupted in his hysteria, decided fire would end it all once more. He would rather be dead than live without Henry, and the wretch before him was doomed from the start. Each breath was a struggle, and the failed clones limbs were still stiff and paralyzed from rigor mortis, undoubtedly he would be doing them both a favor. 

Slowly moving, Victor walked around the bed the creature sat upon, possessing his only companions body, before reaching the fireplace he had lit for warmth upon Henry’s destroyed arrival, before pausing. A moment of genuine pity gripped him, something hollow and weak from years of neglect, and something he barely recognized in his muddled brain. A child. The beast was his and Henry’s child, unnatural and corrupted, but alive in a body where a man once stood. It was the only piece of Henry Victor has left, was he truly willing to give it up? He could save this one, prevent it from developing like the other demon did, allow it an education in privacy and safety from the harsh winters. 

Victor could be a father. The pity in his heart morphed into something stronger, ravaging his weak frame as sobs racked his shoulders. He could save the creature, name it, clothe it. It would be a child of his own! Victor would have to correct the blood flow first, obviously, thin the thick blood in his veins, before attempting to move him at all. He slowly turned with that thought, before looking with new eyes at his child, their son. 

Glazed but bright eyes stared back, and Victor, for the first time in weeks, felt the world fall silent around him.


End file.
